Chapter 532: You Are Lying

Though the process took a long time, it was worth the wait.

As the Silver Dragonblood gradually replaced the mortal blood in her body, Silver Lamp felt her frame brimming with an unprecedented sense of exhilaration while her soul grew increasingly fiery. It was a vitality she had never experienced before, having been frail and sickly since childhood.

The soul and body had always influenced one another. Even an ordinary academy-style sorcerer without physical training would gradually become healthier simply by refining their soul in the Virtual World. A powerful soul naturally gave rise to a formidable body. The reverse held as well, for a powerful body nourished the soul in return.

The relationship between body and soul was not one of a vessel and its passenger. Rather, it was that of the sea and the sky, mirroring and completing each other. Consciousness was simply the ripple born where the two touched.

Among sorcery classes, Brute Body stood foremost in physical cultivation. Their Dragon Blood system represented the crowning achievement of the Gray Fox Age's Brute Body sorcerers.

The Brute Body Class followed two paths. The first was Implantation, which involved reconstructing one's body using spirits related to minerals, machinery, plants, and other materials. Examples included the Diamond Body, Oakwood Physique, and Mechanical Nemesis.

This path brought extraordinary pain, stemming not only from physical cruelty, but also from mental torture. Anyone with an intact body could never imagine how vital flesh was to one's personality.

Certain sorcerers seeking escape from Twisting Green after losing their Grand Laws transformed themselves into complete mechanical beings. They successfully avoided corruption, yet every single one developed severe psychological defects. They hated living people even more than the corrupted creatures, while their mastery of sorcery regressed instead of advancing.

These sorcerers were neither truly alive nor truly dead, resembling the stench of something rotting in a swamp.

That being said, the Brute Body Class did come with its advantages. Its practitioners possessed astonishing defensive abilities, and nearly all of them possessed the ability to sustain themselves on non-food sources. Stones, soil, electricity, sunlight, and wind could all serve as sustenance. Consequently, the Myriad Continent had many Brute Body sorcerers. The Temple of Calamity Flame, for example, housed plenty of people capable of surviving on stones. Silver Lamp had even eaten stones herself while in the Silent Spiral.

Without question, in a society where resources were abundant, ordinary people would never choose to practice the Brute Body Class. This was a matter of simple logic that any Myriadian[1] could deduce on their own, even without observing other societies.

The Gray Fox Age had been an era of immense material abundance. By all rights, the Brute Body Class should have lingered at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, ignored by everyone.

That would have been the case, were it not for a Grand Law of the Gray Fox Age known as Auberon.

Before its ascension, Auberon was a follower of the Fire Cat Age's Grand Law of Circle Cicada, which sought immortality. Auberon went even further, asserting that one should not only live forever, but live with burning passion, hold one's head high, and pursue one's ideals with unwavering determination. Because this ideal conflicted with very few Grand Laws and actually complemented most of them, Auberon emerged as one of the few Grand Laws that successfully transcended and ascended as a true deity.

Through the existence of Auberon, the Brute Body Class entered the halls of prestige during the Gray Fox Age. Thus, the Gray Fox sorcerers forged a second path for the Brute Body discipline: Evolution!

The living flesh was inherently fragile. To alter this harsh, inevitable reality, replacing it with mineral, plant, or machinery seemed all but required. That was the accepted truth.

The same, however, could not be said of the flesh of great beings like Angels, Virtual World dragons, and Abyssal Lords, for theirs was anything but frail!

In contrast to the Implantation path, the Evolution path took a very different approach. If the former meant stuffing immortality into flesh, the latter meant raising the ordinary closer to the legendary. The Gray Fox sorcerers aimed to make a sorcerer's body evolve spontaneously, allowing their physique to gradually approach that of those great beings while keeping the body intact.

What medium, then, could stimulate the entire body and transform it without compromising its integrity? The answer was obvious: blood. So long as a sorcerer received a compatible bloodline from a higher lifeform, that blood would naturally trigger the comprehensive evolution of their body.

This introduced another problem. There were no higher lifeforms in the real world, and the flesh and blood of Virtual World creatures were difficult to bring into reality. How then could they obtain higher-grade blood?

That had not stumped the Gray Fox sorcerers. The Dragonblood Cultivation System was their answer.

It purified the flesh and souls of lower lifeforms directly into higher-grade blood, allowing the user to replace their blood completely and undergo a total transformation.

This was the answer of an era, and the final punctuation mark of extravagance.

The system had not appeared out of nowhere. The Gray Fox sorcerers had sealed hundreds or even thousands of Miracles within the Virtual World beforehand. Once someone used the key to activate the Dragonblood Cultivation System, those Miracles would automatically awaken and begin working for the user. What's more, every single one of those Miracles was at least Sacred Realm level!

Silver Lamp had no idea how many Miracles still lay sleeping within the Virtual World, or how many Sacred Realm and Legendary sorcerers had poured their souls into perfecting this design, all for the distant dream of that Grand Law. What she was partaking in was a miraculous feast spanning hundreds of years. She was hearing the final, fading heartbeat of a glorious era.

[Task progress: 90%. System lock released. Patient mobility restored. The remaining 10% will be executed autonomously by Subsystem 'Blood Seed' until complete extraction of the target Dragonblood sample.]

[Procedure complete. The Blood of the Immortal Research Institute appreciates your utilization of the Dragonblood Cultivation Unit. Please submit operational inquiries or performance evaluations directly to Professor Parace · Blood Saint · Auberon. Your clinical feedback remains vital to our ongoing research.]

Silver Lamp took another look at the creator's name. Two surnames?

The Myriad Continent had never known a tradition of middle names. Whatever followed a given name served as both a surname and the title of one's Grand Law. She herself had once borne the surname Dust Calamity Flame.

So far as she knew, there had been no Grand Law named Blood Saint during the Gray Fox Age.

Whoosh!

A sudden whistle tore through the air, snapping her out of her reverie.

The instant Silver Lamp tilted her head just in time to dodge the flying stone. However, that didn't stop the force from grazing her delicate cheek, leaving a thin cut and a trail of silver blood.

"Your blood is not red."

The word "Your" came from twenty paces away. By the time he said "red," he stood directly in front of her.

With the final syllable came the deafening crack of thunder, accompanied by a shockwave wrapped in white mist. It was a supersonic strike.

Silver Lamp summoned her defensive Miracle, Combustion Shield, at absolute top speed, yet it failed to blunt even a fraction of the blow.

Fortunately, the Silver Dragonblood had tempered her flesh. Driven by reflexes far faster than before, her body shifted on pure instinct to move her heart out of harm's way, all without relying on her spirit. The strike merely pierced her shoulder.

Flameflow.

Silver Lamp transformed into a mass of flames and rapidly retreated dozens of paces. Three seconds later, she was forced to revert to human form. Her skin burned hot, and she would be unable to use Flameflow again for a short while.

The hole in her shoulder had already healed and sealed itself with silver blood.

Silver Lamp had never excelled at direct defense or quick escapes, a vulnerability that reaching the Sacred Realm was meant to fix. However, the Phantom Mirror Dragon Secret Poison had left her soul dangerously fragile. On her last visit to the Virtual World, she had undergone the Forbidden Ritual of Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon Resonance. It had been three months since then, and her soul had yet to fully recover. She calculated she would need to endure the ritual one more time before she could construct her Sacred Realm.

That was one of the reasons Silver Lamp had defected so decisively.

Without a Sacred Realm, she had to rely on the protection of the Temple of Calamity Flame or the Four Pillars Cult. Now on the verge of becoming a Sacred Realm sorcerer, she no longer needed a faction to conceal her weakness. In addition, through the power of the Silver Dragonblood, she could strengthen her soul, allowing her to undergo the ritual safely.

As expected, the Divine Lords never let people have good dreams.

Silver Lamp got a clear look at her attackers and raised an eyebrow. "After losing your Grand Law, have you followers of the Crowslaughter Sect grown so desperate to punish the wicked that you must murder every living soul to satisfy your urges?"

Tahmas stood beside the bonfire, the blazing flames licking across his sinister mask. "First of all, you do not look like a good person."

"What if I am?"

He continued indifferently, "Secondly, unless I hear your defense, you will die as a wicked person. Now, stop this ritual immediately. My friends are suffering, and the Night is closing in."

Silver Lamp shook her head. "I cannot."

"Why?"

"This is not my power. It is a legacy of the Gray Fox Age. Once activated, the entire camp will be drained and extracted until everyone is dried out and dead. I am deeply sorry about your friends. The only consolation is that this method of death should be completely painless, like falling asleep."

She paused. "By the way, why are you not affected?"

Tahmas said, "You are lying."

"I—"

"As you've said," he cut her off, "this is indeed a legacy of the Gray Fox Age, and it really cannot be stopped until everyone is dead. The problem comes when you say you are deeply sorry. That is a lie. You do not feel the slightest bit of remorse.

"I have met people like you countless times. The greatest difference between a Good Crow and an Evil Crow is that the latter can apologize without the slightest difficulty. A Good Crow must face the judgment of their conscience when apologizing. People like you have no conscience. Your apologies are no different from passing gas. All I can smell is the stench of rot.

"Besides, the essence extracted from these victims is that silver substance, is it not?"

Tahmas stared at the wound on Silver Lamp's face. "Silver blood. This is the first time I have seen it as well. You are the one benefiting from this ritual. Kill you, and the ritual will have no choice but to end."

Silver Lamp shook her head. "Do you have any evidence that I am a bad person? I merely activated this device by accident. I never expected it to cause something like this. I never intended to become a beneficiary. You cannot hurt an innocent person just to save everyone else, can you?"

Tahmas suddenly laughed. "Back when the Crowslaughter Sect still existed, that was a question we discussed every week. 'If you encounter someone appearing to be evil, but you have no evidence of their crimes, should you let them go or execute them?'

"Extremists believed in killing first and never letting the guilty escape. Conservatives argued that the person should be imprisoned until their guilt could be established. My mentor was a centrist. His position was to break the target's limbs first. If the investigation proved them innocent, we would bring them back, apologize, and compensate them. And my position is..."

Tahmas leaned forward slightly. "If I have made a mistake, I will gladly endure a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred million times the pain you suffer in Hell. Wait for me there with all the hatred you can muster. I have been looking forward to it for a long time.

"Once every crow has been slain and Hell is filled to the brim, it will be my turn to go there and suffer. Until then...

"My duty is to send you all to Hell!"

1. People of the Myriad Continent. ☜